Airbnbs and short-term tourist accommodation have become something of a political talking point in Spain in recent months.
Their perceived role in inflating rental markets and gentrifying city centres, among other things, are why they’ve become front and centre of the growing anti-tourism movement in Spain.
Facing growing public pressure and protests across Spain’s major cities, the Spanish government has signalled its intent to move against Airbnbs and said it is preparing a raft of measures to regulate tourist accommodation.
On July 3rd, the Minister for Housing and Urban Agenda, Isabel Rodríguez, said the government was working to increase regulation as a matter of urgency.
READ ALSO: Should I cancel my trip to Spain because of the tourism protests?
Spanish media reports also suggest that Sumar, the junior coalition partner in government, will push the ruling Socialists (PSOE) to increase taxes on tourist flats in next year’s state budget.
The proposal is to tax Airbnb and other short-term tourist rentals at 21 percent VAT, which in theory would make them less profitable compared to regular residential rental properties.
The government is also considering modifying the Ley de la Propiedad Horizontal to give neighbours’ associations (known as la comunidad de vecinos in Spanish) the right to veto tourist rentals in their building.
READ ALSO: ‘La comunidad’: What property owners in Spain need to know about homeowners’ associations
This follows news that Barcelona council plans to ‘eliminate’ over 10,000 Airbnbs in the Catalan city by 2029 and return them to social housing stock.
In short, the Spanish government at various levels is promising it will respond to public pressure to regulate Airbnbs.
However, specific details of exactly how this will be done are still unknown. What we do know is that the government will try to increase the supply of available rental flats in Spain, while making sure they are accessible and affordable for locals, by regulating the growing numbers of tourist rentals.
Exactly what proportion of Spain’s housing stock is taken up by Airbnb and other tourist rentals is hard to say. It is estimated that only 41 percent of Airbnb listings are licensed, while 32.5 percent are unlicensed and the rest are license-exempt, according to the watchdog website Inside Airbnb.
Furthermore, when experts make these sorts of calculations they often use total housing stock numbers, including home ownership. This is not a useful comparison. If we take the example of Barcelona, the city where anti-tourism protests have taken a bit of a nasty turn, rental stock is roughly 290,000 units.
If we assume there are roughly 19,000 licensed and unlicensed Airbnb properties in the Catalan capital (according to Inside Airbnb) that represents about 6.5 percent of the entire rental stock dedicated to Airbnb tourist rentals. However, one study back in 2015 wrote that it was 6.85 percent, a number that has surely risen since then, and in reality the number of unlicensed tourist flats is likely much higher than that anyway.
Only time will tell whether government intervention will be effective, and although public pressure is demanding regulation tourist accommodation, some experts are unsure if the measures will have the intended impact.
Juan R. Méndez, a lawyer and expert in tourist accommodation, told Idealista that “it’s natural that, in the current circumstances of social tension, the government should want to take action. It is another matter whether the decisions taken are right or not.
“Since the amendments to the Law on Urban Leases (LAU) to exclude tourist rentals by reference to its specific regulations, the boundary between seasonal and tourist rentals is sometimes very blurred. In Spain, seasonal renting has been very traditional (students, fortnights at the beach, and so on) and the eruption of tourist renting has been a revolution that has turned the market upside down”.
READ ALSO: OPINION: Spaniards should blame landlords, not tourists
Beyond the uncertainty, the data shows that regulating Airbnbs and transferring them into the residential rental market (as many are calling for) would not necessarily solve the lack of supply because demand is so high.
A study by the Secure Rental Foundation and Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC), based on housing data from Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) and Airbnb, shows that transferring tourist properties into the social housing stock would help to increase supply, but not enough to keep up with demand or solve the problem of access to housing in Spain’s major cities.
Antonio Guevara, Dean of the Faculty of Tourism at the University of Málaga, told El Español that regulating Airbnb and other tourist rental platforms will not mean a sudden fall in prices. “If you reduce the presence of tourist housing, you will reduce the tourist overload, but that does not mean that housing prices will fall,” he said.
“Tourist housing is just another factor, to which other factors must be added; tourist housing cannot be blamed exclusively for the increase in prices,” Guevara added. “Controlling tourist housing does not mean that rental prices are going to fall.”
Research by the Harvard Business Review on the impact of New York’s Airbnb ban found that tourist rental accommodation was not the main driver of high rents, and that regulation, rather than outright bans, benefits both locals and the city.
Worryingly, one by-product of the ban in New York is that hotel room rates rose to a record average of $300 per night.
It’s unclear what exactly the Spanish government is planning to do about tourist rentals in Spain. If the experts are anything to go by, regulating Airbnbs should play a role, but it can’t be the be all and end all of state intervention.
Building, whether it be affordable housing to replenish the social housing stock, or affordable hotels for tourists coming to Spain, will also need to be part of it.
Another big issue is the number of empty apartments in cities that are not used for anything at all. I’ve been told by estate agents that they’re empty because the owner doesn’t want to risk renting them out and then not receive rent and being powerless to act.